


The Life of the World to Come

by branwyn



Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Bird Puns, Disability, Domesticity, Episode: s05e13 Return 0, Fix It, Get Together, John Lives at the End, John Reese POV, John Reese/happiness, M/M, Old Married Couple, Post-Canon, Retirement, blink-and-you-miss-it supernatural elements, eucatastrophes, fishing is mentioned and fish are eaten, hunting is described but no animals are hurt, no more secrets no more lies, not a dream or a simulation, original animal character - Freeform, ruthless catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22589752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: To John, it’s the difference between opening a window to let some air in and walking barefoot out into the sun and grass.
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641835
Comments: 22
Kudos: 76
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	The Life of the World to Come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgylePirateWD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgylePirateWD/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [明日谈](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24036916) by [WatermelonJuiceGood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatermelonJuiceGood/pseuds/WatermelonJuiceGood)



> Many thanks to talkingtothesky for beta reading and plot wrangling, and to livenudebigfoot for sprint-partnering.

_1133 Avenue of the Americas  
June 21, 2016  
6:55:39 am_

When John was young, he’d believed that if he was willing to be brave, and not flinch from making the necessary sacrifices, earning a hero’s death like his father’s would be straightforward. Back then he thought that wanting with all his heart to be a good man was all it would take. That he’d recognize a crossroads when he saw one, and go the right way by instinct.

Then a few years passed, and John looked up, and the CIA’s most gifted murderer was looking back at him in the mirror. He didn’t want that life or that death, so he erased himself. Became nothing at all.

And then Harold found him and offered John the only thing he knew how to want anymore: a chance to die doing the right thing. Ever since then, John has been earning his way to this moment, on this rooftop. Because what he didn’t understand, when he was young, is that dying the way you want to die isn’t guaranteed to anybody. It’s just the greatest gift you can be given. 

He must have done something right with the last five years of his life, because look at him: Harold’s in danger, the world is in danger, and all John has to do to keep them safe is his job.

He’s a lucky guy. 

One morning a few years back, John woke up and realized that he was happy. It was the job Harold gave him, which is another way of saying that he was happy because of Harold. John was never sure Harold understood that. 

When John sees him from the rooftop, he does his best to get the point across.

He tilts his head back and smiles into the wind. The sun is rising; the sky is going to be beautiful and blue.

Harold made him so happy. And after today, John won’t be afraid of anything ever again. He’s grateful. He’s so

  


01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00001010 00001010 

  
_Green Brush, New York  
September 2, 2016  
11:09 pm_

He smells water first: like dripping walls, or stagnant puddles. 

When he opens his eyes, it’s dark and he’s in a bed. Tree branches are silhouetted against the darkness of the wide double windows. The room is full of moonlight.

A quilt lies smooth and heavy over his body, stiff layers of cotton and stuffing that smell like detergent, and bleach, and lake water. This house smells like a lake house, which means it smells kind of like a basement that needs a dehumidifier. 

The feeling of calm is like the quilt. It’s not his; it feels like someone left it with him to keep him comfortable. 

It really isn’t like John to just accept waking up in a strange place, not knowing how he got there. But it’s kind of nice, not to be curious. Peaceful.

John’s eyes want to close again, so he lets them.

From somewhere else in the house there’s a noise that corresponds to a bowl or a mug being set down on a kitchen countertop. For some reason, John finds that reassuring. He pictures someone stirring sugar into their tea, and it soothes him back down into sleep.

  


01101101 01100101 01101101 01101111 01110010 01111001 00001010 00001010 

  
_September 3, 2016  
6:54 pm_

When John opens his eyes again the room is filled with all the daylight that can sneak in around the edges of the curtains. The window was open last time. Someone must have come in while he was sleeping. 

He turns his head and finds a pillow next to his, a pair of glasses on the table beside the pillow.

John pushes his legs over the side of the mattress and heads for the latrine. He guzzles water from the faucet like a dog and studies his face in the small square mirror. It’s just his face, long and narrow. Not too much stubble. He could do with a haircut, maybe. The new-looking grey t-shirt and pants he’s dressed in are soft and silky, in a way he’s gotten used to all his clothes being these last few years.

Barefoot, John pads over to the windows and looks down at the sheer drop to the gravel driveway below. Automatic assessment kicks in. The ground slopes downhill to a patch of woods, to water reflecting ripples of afternoon sunlight through the tree trunks. There are no houses, no vehicles, no people that he can see from here, only nature.

Something that wants to be nervousness fizzes in his gut when he tries the bedroom door and finds it unlocked.

He finds the top of a staircase at the end of a narrow hallway lined with braided rag rugs, ugly, thick, and soft under his feet. Friendly noises rise to greet him as he starts down the steps: fingers clattering over a keyboard, a cup rattling against a saucer. 

John’s heart begins hammering in his throat. The protective lethargy is starting to melt like frost after sunrise. When he turns this corner, he’s going to see Harold, and he doesn’t understand why that thought makes his throat tight and his chest feel too full. Doesn’t he see Harold all the time? 

The open kitchen is full of windows that let in lots of light. Sitting at the end of a big oval dining table is Harold, with a laptop. 

Suddenly John remembers: the last time he talked to Harold, he was saying goodbye. He’d thought it was forever. 

He doesn’t know how he knows that. He doesn’t remember the context, or the exact words they used. It’s normal to lose memories after a catastrophic injury, but the memory of grief cuts so deep that he wants to check himself for wounds. 

Harold is in shirtsleeves, looking bored and distant, a little weary. The light in the windows is the color of sunsets, of whiskey and happy endings. It picks out the gold and the silver in Harold’s hair, reflects off the metal in his glasses.

 _I never thought I’d see him again,_ John thinks, but why he ever thought that is not as important as the fact that he was wrong. He’s here now.

They’re both here. 

“Hey,” John rasps.

Harold’s head snaps up. His mouth shapes a silent word, and for a long moment he just stares. 

Then he shoves himself out of the chair so abruptly that John flinches for him. He steps forward. Harold grips his shoulders, frames John’s face with his hands. 

“John,” Harold whispers, disbelieving, overwhelmed. “Oh, my dear John.”

The rule is, John touches Harold whenever he can get away with it, and Harold touches John when he thinks it’s necessary. Not now. Harold crowds him gently, relentlessly, forcing John to shuffle until his back touches the wall. Harold’s chest is flush with his, Harold’s stale coffee breath misting against his neck. 

John’s body trembles with every reverberation of Harold’s heartbeat.

Somewhere in the very back of his head, in the low place where instinct skitters out of the reach of reason, John is aware that his skin feels tight, like an unfamiliar suit, and that Harold looks older than he remembers him.

“Harold.” _What happened,_ he thinks. Then, from nowhere: _What did you do._

A muscle twitches next to Harold’s mouth. He’s breathing slightly too hard. Visibly gathering himself, he takes his hands off John’s shoulders and lifts his chin.

“It’s very good to see you on your feet.” He sounds normal, except for the breathless little tremor in his voice. “You’ll want to take it easy for awhile. You’ve been through the wringer. How—how do you feel?”

John doesn’t need to think about it. “I’m good.” It’s the truth, even. He feels like he’s had enough sleep for maybe the first time since Samaritan came online.

Harold’s mouth twitches again, his exasperation familiar and comforting. 

“You should probably eat something soon. I have clothes and things for you, as well, when you want to shower...” He hesitates. “I know you must have questions.”

There are new lines and shadows around Harold’s eyes. John kind of wants to trace them with his fingertips. “I guess I must,” he agrees, after a beat.

Harold blinks. His eyes say, _Wait, really?_ John just stands there until he smiles, incredulous and sweet. 

“Apologies, John, I’m not at my most articulate.” Harold’s laugh is filled with wonder. “I suppose I must be an expert in crisis management, but this, this is the opposite. A eucatastrophe. I...I find myself at a very happy loss.” 

John blinks the sting out of his eyes, lets his gaze unfocus. The view through the windows is all green, all trees and grass. He’s barraged, suddenly, by sense memories of summers when he was a kid, warm air spiced with the deep smells of earth and water and clean air.

“Nice place you got here,” he says.

“Oh? I’m very glad you think so.”

“Show me around?”

Harold’s brow creases a little. John recognizes the look Harold gets when he can’t decide if John is messing with him. He reaches for Harold’s hand, squeezes it a little, and Harold only hesitates a second before squeezing back.

They don’t do this kind of thing, but right now John can’t remember why.

They step through the sliding glass kitchen doors onto a large wooden deck that spans the entire back of the house. John sees tables and comfortable chairs, a large grill, a brazier. He breathes in fresh cut grass and sun-soaked pinewood. 

It feels like late summer, when the nights start to get cool. He thinks they might be upstate. If he asked Harold would probably tell him, but John seems to have misplaced his curiosity.

They walk the perimeter of the property, Harold setting a considerately slow pace, like he’s afraid John’s only pretending to be healthy and strong. He points out three kinds of rose bushes, a small kitchen garden with neat rows of herbs, watermelons on the vine, tomatoes climbing a trellis. 

They have no visible neighbors. The driveway isn’t gated. There’s not a single security camera that John can see, although that might be a plus, since they’re doing this under Samaritan’s nose. 

Harold leans on him as they walk the steep downhill path to the lake and out onto the narrow pier. Weathered planks shift loosely under John’s sandals. He watches little bubbles form on the surface of the dark water, and looks for turtles. 

“Your adoptive grandparents owned a vacation home in Sumner, Washington, near Bradley Lake. You visited them there during the summers when you were in high school.” Harold thrusts his hands into his pockets and looks out into the distance. “I hoped that, if this place happened to conjure any memories for you, they would be pleasant ones.”

John isn’t surprised Harold knows that, but it’s unusual for him to talk about the things he knows about John’s past. 

“I liked it up there,” he says, and Harold nods sharply.

“This weather has been glorious. I’m—I feared you would miss it.”

There’s new silver in Harold’s hair, and the suit he’s wearing is a light grey wool, shot through with strands of pink silk. John doesn’t recognize it. More importantly, it was flashier than Professor Whistler could get away with. 

“How long was I out?” says John.

Harold hesitates. “I don’t know exactly. At first, I was recovering from my own injuries—no, it’s all right,” he says, when John’s head jerks up. “I’m fine now. Or at least, I’m no worse than I was. But some details of the recent past are a bit of a blur, even for me.”

John will decide later whether he trusts Harold’s definition of fine. “Are we safe here?” 

“Yes.” Harold is decisive. “Or, well. As safe as anyone can be, in such a primitive landscape.” He sniffs at the clear blue sky. “Raccoons are rather more aggressive creatures than I remembered.” 

John can’t help grinning. “Not used to country life, Harold?” 

“On the contrary, I lived on a farm until I was twenty,” says Harold, stunning John speechless. “And the surrounding area was vastly more forsaken than this. When I say that country life is overrated, I speak from experience. Oh!” His grip on John’s arm tightens. “Look, the geese are coming in for a water landing.”

Harold presses close to him as the geese fly low over the lake, gliding over the rippled surface, throwing up a fine spray of droplets that John can feel against his exposed ankles. He looks down; Harold is smiling like it’s Christmas morning. 

“Friends of yours?” John says, around the lump in his throat.

“Oh, really, John. Bird puns? Isn’t that rather low-hanging fruit?”

“Low-flying, maybe.” 

It’s close to sunset, and the surface of the lake looks like it’s catching fire. John is beginning to think he’s dreaming. There’s too much that’s good here, a perfection he never coveted because he never knew it could exist. 

If so, he’s fine with it. If this is a dream, he can probably get Harold to touch his face again.

“We should get back to the house and get some food in you,” Harold mutters. “Any preferences?”

“Well, that depends, Harold. You going to cook for me?”

“Mr. Reese, a man of your talents should have inferred by now that I don’t cook.”

“We could fire up that grill I saw back on the deck.” 

Harold looks uncertain, then shrugs. “I suppose if we’re going to burn our dinner, we might as well do it on purpose.”

Back inside, John takes a shower. He dresses in clothes that Harold gives him, good jeans and a fine blue cotton shirt. His shoes feel a little strange, like his feet aren’t used to being confined anymore. He doesn’t try to fix his hair; he thinks maybe Harold likes it better falling loose over his forehead this way. 

In the kitchen and around the grill, Harold watches him closely. He does a good job of pretending that it’s because he wants to be helpful and not because he’s worried. But John roasts sausages and skewers of vegetables and apples wrapped in foil without setting anything on fire that he doesn’t mean to. They eat on the porch, where they have to raise their voices to be heard over the cicadas and the crickets. 

When it’s dark, John carries their dishes to the sink. Harold pulls a gold-plated cigarette lighter from his pocket and lights a candle to keep the mosquitoes away. He refills both their wine glasses. They sit quietly side by side.

When the air turns chilly, John retrieves Harold’s cardigan and stands behind his chair to drape it over Harold’s shoulders. Harold grabs his hand, presses it where his neck meets his shoulder. 

“I should confess something.” Harold traces John’s knuckles with light fingertips, making every hair on his arm stand on end. “One night shortly after I brought us here, I found that I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t shake the irrational fear that your heart might stop beating if I left you alone overnight. So I went into your room and lay down on the bed next to you. Slept like a baby.” His tone is confident, but there’s a tremor in his voice. “I’ve been sleeping there ever since. It’s a tremendous presumption, but I’m afraid that if I let you go tonight without mentioning it, I’ll simply cave to temptation in the wee hours and disturb your rest.”

It takes John a few seconds to realize that Harold needs an out-loud response. “That mean you’re ready to turn in?”

His hand tightens convulsively on John’s, and Harold was wrong, John thinks. He only had one question, and Harold has just answered it.

  


01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00001010

  
John never really pictured himself being intimate with Harold. In the privacy of his head he could admit what Harold meant to him, but keeping Harold safe had meant being the guy that didn’t keep anybody’s picture in his wallet. Getting to work with Harold, seeing him every day, was more than John deserved already.

When they get up to the bedroom that first night, though, Harold presses their foreheads together and sighs, deep and contented, and John understands in a flash that _Harold_ has been thinking about this, maybe for a long time. It shakes John up, makes him angry. If this was something Harold wanted, John should have given it to him a long time ago.

“You’re really here.” Harold brushes soft fingertips over his cheekbones. “It’s hard to believe.”

John smiles. “Why’s that?”

“I—I don’t know. Just seems too good to be true, I suppose.”

“You know you don’t need to flatter me, right?” John opens the buttons on his shirt and watches Harold’s eyes fix on his hands. “I’m already on board, here.”

If John had let himself think about this, he might have guessed that Harold would be sweetly eager and slightly out of his element in the bedroom. He’s not either of those things. He descends on John like a strategist on the battlefield, diving for the hollow of John’s throat, tasting the skin of his neck, tracing the shape of his biceps and the stretch of his shoulders, so that John is gasping before he’s even managed to pull Harold’s tie off.

There are things Harold can’t easily do, but there isn’t much that John can’t, or won’t, do for Harold. If lying in bed all day didn’t run counter to Harold’s pain management strategy, there wouldn’t be any good reason, as far as John can see, to go anywhere else for the next 72 hours. The whole world is apparently standing still to give them this time together. When he wakes up the next morning, he expects Harold to say something like, _This was a very pleasant interlude, but the numbers wait for no one._ Instead, Harold asks John if he would mind checking the refrigerator to see if they have the ingredients for French toast.

Shaw and Root are handling things back in the city, John guesses, but it’s a little strange when Harold doesn’t take a single phone call for three days. He knows Harold isn’t wearing an earpiece; he checked. John hasn’t even seen Harold touch his laptop since he came downstairs the first afternoon.

But Harold doesn’t leave him a lot of time to speculate. Every day, he has a new agenda of leisure activities, like he’s just been saving them up until John got his ass kicked and was forced to take some down time in the country. They walk at least a dozen sedate, well-maintained nature trails in the woods surrounding the house. He plans the menus for their dinners and orders the groceries, then plays sous chef while John cooks. When John hesitantly mentions that he might like to try the fishing here some afternoon, Harold has rods and tackle delivered that very day, and waves John off with them while he goes to work in the vegetable garden. 

After dinner, John finds a stray cat pawing at the fish heads in the composting heap, a huge orange tom with a tipped ear. He scratches under its chin, and the cat lopes along at his feet when he returns to the house.

“I do miss Bear,” says Harold, eyeing the cat with a look of resignation as it curls up purring on a deck chair and peers at him through sleepy yellow eyes. “But I’m sure I can persuade Ms. Shaw to bring him up for a visit. He’d really like it here, I think. So many squirrels to chase.”

John’s heart gives a funny sideways lurch. He finds a spot on the deck steps and sits down quickly.

“I forgot about Bear,” he says, when Harold looks at him in alarm. “I didn’t even wonder where he was.”

Harold sits beside him and touches his hand. “Of course you didn’t. It’s not at all unusual for Bear to stay with our friends for a few days. I’m really sorry, John I didn’t think. I should have insisted he be here.”

“He likes hanging out with Shaw,” John says, because it makes him feel less like a man who betrayed his dog.

“So he does, and no wonder. He’ll almost certainly need to go on a diet when he comes back.”

“So will we, if we don’t stop eating French toast.”

Harold tilts his head consideringly. “I think you’d carry a little extra weight with _great_ distinction.”

They watch movies in the evenings. Harold’s favorite is a comedy from the 1930s about Katharine Hepburn and her pet cheetah. John tries to tell Harold that his favorite is _Die Hard,_ but Harold gives him a knowing, disappointed look, and John hunches into the couch cushions and admits that it’s really _Saving Private Ryan_. One night, they drive into town to see a new release in the theater, but sitting in the dark with their thighs pressed together turns out to be pretty bad for their concentration. 

They keep eating dinner out on the deck by the light of citronella candles. Evening becomes John’s favorite time of day—not that these days have had any bad parts. Harold drinks wine and John drinks coffee. Harold talks about places he’s traveled, places he’d like to revisit with John. Mostly John sits quietly and listens, but one night he finds himself telling Harold about his family, saying their names out loud for the first time in years. John had been eight, almost nine, when Sophie was born. He remembers how heavy she felt when his dad put her in his arms for the first time, how tiny and how important. The next baby he held was Leila, and she was in danger, and all John could think about was how it had been his job to keep Sophie safe, too. 

The more time he spends with Harold in this peaceful bubble, the more room John feels like he has under his ribs, like he got scooped clean of a lifetime of sorrow and regret and all that’s left is joy, and lots of room to breathe. Sometimes, after a successful mission, the kind that hit hard and took casualties but saved a lot of people in the end, John felt this way, but it’s the difference between opening a window to let some air in and walking barefoot out into the sun and grass. He walked in the dark for so long, but now there’s a night sky full of summer stars, and together with Harold, he’s got time to learn all their names.

  


01110000 01110010 01101001 01100011 01100101

  
On the morning of the third day after he wakes up, John goes hunting.

There’s no thrill in killing helpless wildlife after you’ve dropped bodies on three continents. The idea of hurting anything on four legs makes John feel sick to his stomach. But it’s too early in the season to hunt deer anyway. (Or bears, a thought that makes him cringe for Bear’s sake, then grin like crazy, as he imagines hauling a bear home in the back of a truck. Just—Harold’s _face_.) 

Game birds are in season now, ducks and geese and wild turkeys. And in hindsight, John probably should have guessed that Harold would be just as strongly against hunting feathered animals as John is uncomfortable hunting furry ones. 

“It’s so pointlessly violent,” he wails when John explains where he’ll be for most of the next morning. “Not to mention _wasteful_. At least we ate the fish you caught. You never even eat the duck I order from Peking Palace.”

John nods. “Never liked duck,” he says. “Too greasy.”

Harold spreads his hands, like John just made his point for him.

“I was thinking of taking a speedboat out on the lake before the weather turns,” he says, cajoling. “Speedboating is exhilarating, rather like flying over water. Wouldn’t you like to join me?”

John agrees that it sounds like fun. “How about this afternoon? I should be back by lunch.”

Harold’s mouth quivers, then flattens in a sad little line. He turns away, walking with his tea cup to the glass door. John finishes loading the dishwasher, then walks up behind Harold and silently rests his chin on his shoulder. 

“I just don’t see why,” Harold mutters, relaxing against his chest.

John thinks Harold knows exactly why, and that’s the whole trouble. “It’s like you thought I could go a whole summer without shooting anything,” he says against Harold’s neck.

In the door, Harold’s reflection shuts its eyes wearily. “I suppose I was fooling myself that I could keep you away from guns simply by neglecting to pack any.”

He brushes his lips over the shell of Harold’s ear. “This has been nice,” he says. “Better than nice. But I can’t just slack off forever.”

“And so you’re going to defend us from _waterfowl_?” says Harold witheringly.

John puffs a laugh into his hair. “I’ve met some pretty sneaky birds in my time, Finch.”

“I’m just going to have to live with the bird puns, I see.”

Harold’s side of the bed is empty when John’s alarm goes off before dawn. He’s meeting his hunting group in town: the guides, and the property owner, are locals, while the other hunters are mostly city boys on vacation, a description that John thinks probably applies to him too. He gets showered and dressed and goes down to the kitchen. 

Harold is slumped listlessly in front of his laptop. The screen glows in the semi-darkness, but he’s staring into the distance, preoccupied, or maybe just tired. They’d gone to bed together, and John had fallen asleep with Harold snug under his arm, but he must have gotten up again. There are circles under his eyes.

John pauses in the doorway, like that first afternoon, and Harold smiles at him gently, then gets up to pour John a cup of coffee. John takes the cup from his hand, sets it on the table, and tugs Harold against his chest.

“If I do shoot a duck, I promise to turn it into cat food for Bunny,” he says, tucking Harold’s head under his chin. “No waste.”

Harold snorts softly. “If you’re determined to keep him, he’s going to have to become an indoor cat. I’m planning to set up bird-feeders next week. I won’t lure them in just to be slaughtered wholesale by an obligate carnivore.”

John hates the tight, unhappy lines that sink in around Harold’s eyes, even when he smiles and kisses John goodbye. He wishes he were better with words. If he were more articulate, maybe he could explain to Harold that, just because he needs to shoot a gun to remember who he is, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in the life they’re starting to build here. 

The opposite, actually. You don’t try to protect something you know you can’t keep.

  


01110000 01110101 01110010 01110000 01101111 01110011 01100101

  
Harold brought them here, away from the city, to retire. John figured that out the second day, while he and Harold were walking the nature trail in the woods behind the house. John was still happily dazed, drunk on contentment. Harold stopped every few feet to notice some flower, or ask John if the berries on that bush were edible, or grab John’s wrist to hold him still so he could identify a certain bird call. That’s why he hasn’t mentioned the numbers, the Machine, or Samaritan since John woke up. Harold’s built some kind of—firewall, around this place, and he thinks it can protect them indefinitely.

John trusts Harold’s paranoia to keep them threat-aware, and he thinks he can even live with retirement, especially since it pulls Harold out of the line of fire. But putting his feet up and growing a beer gut, that’s another story.

Training alone can’t teach a person to be what John is. There’s something in his blood, some unnameable instinct that has been fundamental to his relationship with his body for as long as he can remember. Maybe, in another life, he could have been an athlete. In this one, he’d joined the army. Mark had called him gifted, once. _You’re an incredibly gifted man, John. Your country can put that kind of talent to good use._

All his life, John served his gift, trusted it to make him into the son his father would have been proud of. Maybe that didn’t work out so well, but he’s still the guy whose job is to take a bullet for Harold, if necessary.

Maybe Harold’s right, and they’re safe here, but all safety in life is temporary. The world’s not going to leave them alone forever just because they’re in love. John still has a purpose.

  


01100111 01110010 01101001 01100101 01100110

  


“John?” Harold’s voice rings out high and sharp. He hears the rumble of the sliding door opening, then the hollow tap of shoes across the deck boards. “What on earth are you doing out here? I was worried, you were supposed to be back at lunch, and it’s past dinner. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Seated with his back to Harold on the deck steps, John doesn’t turn around. Instead he shuts his eyes, lets Harold’s agitated burble wash over him, soothe him, without really hearing it.

A hand touches his shoulder. John tenses. Harold’s pale eyes are very wide, but his mouth is resolute. “Something happened,” he says. “Please tell me.”

“Nothing happened,” says John. It’s late enough that the cicadas are in bed, but the crickets are chirping, softly, not nearly loud enough to drown out all the words John doesn’t want to say.

Harold’s mouth twists. He stomps down two of the steps, then braces himself against John’s shoulder and lowers himself to sit down. He’s wearing jeans, which is unusual enough to distract John for a moment, with a white cotton shirt and tan blazer. Time was, John never thought he’d get to see Harold’s version of casual dress. He’d tried to steal little secrets like that from Harold any way he could; back then, John couldn’t see Harold ever trusting him enough to share.

It used to make him a little sad sometimes, because John started trusting Harold pretty quickly, actually. 

“I don’t think I can keep us safe anymore,” he says, because the truth is the least of all the things he owes Harold. “I don’t know how to…” He shakes his head. “Something’s different.”

He’d been deep in the woods, feeling like a jackass in hunter camo and orange vest, the weight of the rifle cool and a little unfamiliar in his hands. The two guys chattering about a yard behind him were old buddies; they’d been out on dozens of these trips, like it was the middle-age version of summer camp. John let himself feel briefly superior, then envious, because if he were the kind of man who had to interrupt his life to get a little violence instead of the other way around, maybe that would have been better.

Then the call went up. In the split second between lifting his rifle and sighting along the barrel, he’d felt…

John still doesn’t know what he’d felt. But he knew what it meant.

“I’ve lost my edge,” he says, into Harold’s tense but patient silence. “Maybe when I got hurt, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting old. But the next pro that comes after us could take me out.” He breathes the cool night in deep, then cuts his throat in one smooth motion. “You should get clear of me before that happens.”

“Don’t _say_ that,” Harold hisses. 

John looks at him. His face is tight and miserable, like when he’s having a bad pain day. John looks down again, blinking hard.

He doesn’t know how to explain in a way that will make sense to Harold. There’s a disloyal, selfish part of him that doesn’t want to try very hard. Next to him, Harold stares into the darkness. He doesn’t look lost for words; he looks like there are words building on the tip of his tongue that he doesn’t like the taste of.

“Maybe it’s some kind of PTSD,” John says, fumbling.

“That seems unlikely, you’ve been post-traumatic since long before I found you.”

John blinks. “There’s that.” He lifts his chin, turns his face up to a dark sky. “I think I’m probably still good at what I do. But the life I’ve had, the enemies I’ve made, good isn’t good enough.”

Harold pulls back, disbelieving. “ _You’ve_ made enemies? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

“All the more reason not to risk more—”

“Oh, stop it, John, just _stop_ it.” Harold pushes to his feet suddenly and stands at the bottom of the steps, facing the water hidden behind the trees. “We are _safe_. I’ll say it as many times as I have to, but you’ve gotta meet me halfway and at least _try_ to believe me.”

John rubs his forehead. He wants to give in to Harold on this; he wants that for himself. It’s not lack of _wanting_ that makes John this way. “You can’t know that for certain,” he says between his teeth.

Harold shuts his eyes. “What did I say when I first found you. Knowing things has never been my problem.”

John waits. Harold looks like he’s having an argument with himself. He sits down next to John again and reaches for his hand, threads their fingers together.

“I understand what you’re saying. At least I think I do.” His voice is very soft. “There’s an intuitive component to your skills that is difficult to describe or quantify. It’s what made you different It’s why your instructors and superiors in the army kept singling you out, moving you up in rank. It’s why the CIA recruited you so aggressively, even though your psychological evaluations strongly indicated that you might be a poor fit for some aspects of the work. When you say that something’s different—it’s like you can’t access that intuition through the same pathways anymore. Or to put it another way, you’re still fluent, but it’s no longer your native language.”

When John doesn’t speak after awhile, Harold looks at him. John is breathing hard, he feels flattened; this is exactly how it had felt five years ago when an intense stranger in a boring suit plucked him off the streets and called him “Mr. Reese”. 

“John.” Harold’s face collapses into tenderness. “Don’t you understand by now. If we’re not together, that’s not safety. It’s exile.”

He nods. Harold lifts John’s hand to his mouth and presses his lips to scarred knuckles.

“You belong with me,” he says, like it’s simple. “So, please. Just be with me.”

  


01100010 01100001 01110010 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110

  
_September 7, 2016_  
2:34 am

_What John didn’t understand when he was young is that dying the way you want to die is the greatest gift you can be given._

_Harold made him so happy. And John is grateful, he’s so_

*

He wakes up gasping in an empty bed. The numbers on the bedside clock burn his eyes, make them tear up. 

John sucks the air in, over and over, conscious of his inflating lungs, of skin that is whole, of dense bones and muscles that stretch. 

He rolls onto his side and drags Harold’s cool pillow to his face, breathes in the reassuring smell. A sob of relief tears loose from his chest. He can feel prison walls inside him crumbling into rubble.

He gets up and stumbles a little on legs that feel very long. He washes his face. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he lifts his shirt. The scars he remembers are all there; the ones he doesn’t, aren’t. 

When John gets to the kitchen, Harold doesn’t ask, just goes over to the counter to fill the electric kettle. John drinks chamomile tea now. Harold likes to make hot drinks for him, but doesn’t want him drinking coffee at night. John has learned to like it as long as there’s some honey.

He waits at the table. Harold puts the cup down in front of him and sits.

“Am I dead?” John says, calm and curious.

“No,” says Harold. He’d been reaching for his own mug, but a tremor wracks his hand. He pulls back. “You were though. For a little over two months.”

He’s relieved. He’s giddy with relief. Since he woke up he knew there was something, and in John’s experience, secrets are usually much worse than this. So, he was dead. That’s fine. He was resuscitated after drowning once, so it’s not even the first time. 

“Tell me,” he encourages Harold.

“When you have a lot of money,” Harold says slowly, “people with things to sell have a way of...finding you. You learn pretty quickly that just about anything you can imagine is attainable. As long as you’re willing to pay what it costs.” His mouth tightens. “So, when I tell you that we’re safe, it’s not wishful thinking. We have paid and _paid_ for this safety, John. You more than anyone.”

The glass door behind Harold is open, letting in a cool breeze and the smell of the lake. John sees a saucer of tuna on the floor, where Harold has been trying to lure Bunny into becoming an indoor cat. 

John notices then that the glass door reflects the screen of Harold’s laptop. John is used to Harold’s screen being dark, filled with prompt windows and boxes of code, but what he sees is black and white: an open word processor document, and about a paragraph’s worth of words.

A second later he catches Harold’s eye. Harold looks at him, perfectly blank.

“I’m writing a book,” he says in a mild voice. “Trying to, at least. Always been a big reader, but it seems that understanding the structure of a good narrative doesn’t entirely prepare you for constructing one. I suppose I just needed a distraction while I was waiting for you to wake up. And it’s probably the best use I can make, now, of—the knowledge I possess.”

The chair is solid beneath him, but John’s stomach lurches like he’s in free fall. 

Harold reaches for the laptop and lets his hand hover slightly over the keys. “I’ve always had a talent amounting to genius for evading the consequences of my actions,” he murmurs. “And this isn’t even a real consequence, but a very great privilege.”

“Harold—”

“Don’t, John. If you say you’re sorry about this, I—I might just pour this tea on you.” He takes a deep breath. “I may no longer be the same man who built the Machine, but I’m still—quite a talented engineer, with immense resources. There is nothing, _nothing_ to pity me for.”

John doesn’t even want to argue. He’s just panicking. It’s like discovering that it went wrong that day after all. Like he’s standing on the wrong rooftop watching Harold fall under a hail of bullets, like Samaritan is ascending and the Machine is winking out of existence. 

Like he _failed_.

Harold leans forward. “When Jessica died,” he says, and the sound of her name grabs John like a fishhook to the eye, “and you were suicidal, drowning in despair, what would you _not_ have paid to bring her back? Or Joss?” 

John’s ears are ringing. Harold blinks hard.

“I have no regrets, John. You were dead and now you’re alive, so don’t you dare—” His nostrils flare. “Don’t try to tell _me_ —”

Abruptly, he collapses. Hunched over, he covers his mouth with his hand and tries to muffle a sob. 

John scrapes chair legs across the floor, and Harold grabs fistfuls of his shirt, presses his forehead into John’s chest. His tears soak across the front of John’s shirt, hot as blood.

John holds him, and holds him, and breathes. It feels better than he could have imagined, just standing here, trembling in his new and glorified body, fashioned from something more precious than Harold’s rib.

  


01100111 01101001 01100110 01110100 00001010 00001010 00001010 00001010

  
_Bethesda Fountain  
October 8, 2016  
3:00 pm_

Shaw unclips Bear from his leash and John goes to one knee in the middle of the courtyard to absorb an armful of ecstatic dog.

“John,” she says, while he tries not to get any slobber in his mouth. “You look good. Considering the last time I talked to you, you were six feet deep in Arlington.” She squints. “Did you stop dyeing the gray out of your hair or something?”

John grins up at her, flashing as many teeth as Bear. Maybe less tongue. Shaw looks the same. Healthier than when they got her back from Decima, more alive to the world than after they lost Root. But the same, in a good way.

He moves fast, manages to get both arms around Shaw before she can go for a weapon.

“Get. the fuck. off me.” John squeezes her in an even tighter hug and makes a happy little noise into her hair. His timing is still good; he gets clear just in time to not get punched below the belt. 

Shaw shakes herself. “You are so damn lucky Bear likes you.”

“Thanks for bringing him.” John scratches the top of Bear’s head, and gets a reassuring lick. “Harold and I should be back at the end of the month. Thing is, we talked it over, and—Bear’s a working dog. Since we’re retired, we figured you could use a permanent partner. Besides, he’d probably just get bored chasing squirrels upstate eventually.”

Shaw looks aside, fast, like she doesn’t want him to see how relieved she is. How much she loves Bear was always one of John’s favorite things about her.

“Bear likes chasing squirrels.” She shrugs. “We could use a vacation now and then.”

“You’re both welcome anytime. Harold can take you out in his speedboat.”

Her eyebrows fly to her hairline. “Now there’s a mental image. That for me?” She nods at the envelope under John’s arm.

“Harold’s sorry he couldn’t make it,” John says, handing it over.

“Yeah, how’s he doing?”

Harold is good when they’re together. When they’re cooking, or Harold is reading to John, or John is picking Harold’s socks up off the floor while Harold slinks guiltily in a corner (turns out, it’s easy for a billionaire to make people think he’s some kind of neat freak when really, he’s just got a rolodex full of cleaning services.) Around John, Harold is happy, lighthearted in a way John didn’t know he could be. He smiles a lot and doesn’t laugh like it’s being rationed.

But they’re still separate people, so John goes out sometimes for an hour or two, because he wants Cheetos and Harold keeps _forgetting_ to add them to the grocery list, or because John likes driving alone with the windows down so he can sing along to the Eagles really loudly. Sometimes, he comes back and finds Harold sitting in front of his computer, looking at nothing in particular, seeming wistful, or just really deep in thought. 

He’s mourning, even if he won’t acknowledge it. 

John isn’t. He realized pretty quickly that he hasn’t lost anything he can’t do without. There’s no Samaritan now, just the Machine, and the Machine loves her dad, so it doesn’t matter than John’s no longer an unstoppable destructive force—nobody that matters is going to mess with them. He and Harold went to get a drink in town their first week, and a couple of guys started hassling Harold in the bar parking lot while John was taking a whizz. Turns out, John is still capable of kicking some punk’s ass if has to. And really, that’s all he needs.

John thought, the first couple of days after waking up, that he might be a little brain damaged. He didn’t know how else to explain how happy he was all the time, how content to just accept the peace that was offered to him and not need more. 

But he gets it now. 

Once upon a time, he met someone who pulled him out of the dark and gave him a purpose. John had figured, what better way to spend the last four or five years of his life. Then he died protecting the friend who’d come to mean more to him than anyone else in the world. 

John hadn’t been there in time for Jessica, but he had been there in time for Harold. Purpose, fulfilled. 

Now he just gets to have a life.

“Harold’s good,” John tells Shaw. “We’re both good. You should schedule that vacation when you get a chance, Shaw. I grill a mean steak these days.”

She tilts her head, and John’s not sure if that means she’s embarrassed for him, or deeply interested in the steak. “What’s in Europe?” she says.

“Just a little unfinished business. Not the kind you shoot at,” he adds.

Shaw arches an eyebrow. To Bear, she says, _Hier_ , and when she puts his leash back on, John bends low for a last getting-licked. He lets his fingers sink into Bear’s thick fur. It feels good to let his face smile just as much as it wants to.

“Lionel says hello,” she says casually. “Of course, I didn’t tell him you could start your own religion if you wanted. He’s Catholic, I thought it might unnerve him a little.”

“Tell Lionel he’s invited to the cookout too.”

“God, look at you.” Shaw sounds disgusted, which, for her, is the same thing as fond. “You’re fucking _glowing_. I thought being retired would drive you up a clocktower, but you’re really into this suburban house-husband stuff. What do you even do up there? Golf?”

“Fishing.” John smiles. “Sometimes, I do a little duck hunting.”

 _Duck hunting_ , she mouths. 

John waits until Shaw and Bear are out of sight, then walks over to a bench and sits down. Next to him, Harold lowers his newspaper. 

“She seems well,” Harold says quietly. “Bear did too.”

“You could have said hi.”

Harold shrugs. “There will be other opportunities. For now, invigorating though it is to be back in the city, we really should get going. The jet is waiting.”

John doesn’t move. The jet can wait till they get to the airport; Harold owns it, after all. “What did Shaw mean about Arlington?”

Music from a bandstand twenty yards away filters into Harold’s silence. 

“At first, I didn’t think you were coming back,” he says. “You’re a hero, John. Arlington is where you—would have belonged. Of course, with the missile strike, there was no body. The casket I buried contains a photograph and a few mementos. And—” His shoulders hunch slightly. “The headstone has your name on it. Your real one.”

John has to take a moment to breathe through this revelation. It hurts to think of Harold alone those two months. But he feels something hot and sharp, painful and _right_ , when he thinks of laying that name to rest in Arlington. 

It was his dad’s name, after all.

“Root?” John croaks.

Harold stares at his hands. “I didn’t leave Root in potter’s field either.”

John hadn’t remembered about Root until after he remembered the rooftop. When John first asked about her, Harold had excused himself abruptly to take a long walk alone by the lake. All the grief that Harold doesn’t have to feel for John anymore lives in his feelings about her now.

John’s pretty sure he knows why Harold asked him to talk to Shaw alone today. 

“You’ve been avoiding Shaw, haven’t you?”

“I feel a certain awkwardness,” Harold admits. “I—only possessed resources enough to retrieve one of you. I loved Root, and I got her killed. But the same was true of you. When it came to the point, I simply—”

He slumps slowly, like a tire losing air.

“It was never even a choice,” he says, soft and miserable. “But how could I possibly face Sameen after that, when I don’t even care much for mirrors, these days.”

John can’t think of anything to say. He takes Harold’s hand, and holds on. 

“The envelope you gave her contains money, identification papers, and all the information I’ve been able to uncover about my...my broker.” John jerks, startled. “I didn’t feel comfortable giving her advice regarding what use to make of that information. But nor could I live with keeping it from her.”

Harold turns to him with a searching expression. “I’ve wanted to ask, though I’ve also been afraid of asking. Do you…” He tilts his head. “Do you remember anything?”

It’s still really warm for early October, practically summer in the sunlight. The rooftop was a late June morning, cool as spring. “I remember all of it, I think,” says John. 

Harold blanches. 

“Not dying,” John adds hastily. He remembers realizing he was going to run out of bullets, counting the number of shooters still standing. Doing the math, he can guess how many times he got shot. He would have died almost instantly, no time to feel it. “I remember you. I remember that I was really happy.”

“I don’t—” Harold stares at him.

“And, when I woke up, I was still the same kind of happy. It hasn’t worn off yet.” John smiles crookedly. “I might have a little brain damage.”

Harold’s eyes are bright. He grips John’s hand until his knuckles grind together, and looks out over the park.

“You know, Nathan and I thought changing the world was our destiny.” His mouth twists. “I think that’s why, when the Machine began singling me out, it bothered me so much. What glory was there in building a system just to nanny _myself_? Back then I was so blind I didn’t even see the contradiction in my own logic.” Harold shakes his head. “There I was, teaching her that she had to take care of everyone, but she wasn’t allowed to take care of me, the only family she had.”

“I’m pretty sure the Machine has forgiven you,” John says, a little helpless. He remembers the Machine whispering in his ear that day, feeding him tactical data mixed with comfort. Promising him that, if she woke up when it was all over, she’d look after Harold for him, always.

Suddenly, John wonders if Harold’s _broker_ maybe got a text from an unknown number, pointing them in Harold’s direction. If so, Shaw is probably about to find herself with a decision to make.

“After all those years and all those people.” Harold shakes his head. “When I saw you on the roof, in that moment, the only world I wanted to save was you. It took losing you for me to become as wise as my own child.”

Time was, John would look at Harold and think about holding him, out of the same animal instinct that made him hover close to fire barrels when he was sleeping on the street. Like John was still a stray and Harold was the only light in his darkness. 

Now, as Harold shivers a little in the sunlight, John wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, holds him just as tight as he wants to. These days, John is lit up from the inside. He can take the warmth Harold kindles in him and warm Harold right back.

**Author's Note:**

> ["and I won't be afraid of anything ever again"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YahiDX_mbWA)
> 
> https://www.binarytranslator.com/


End file.
